I'll second the "voice of reason" statement here, but, would add, as an admitted fan of IB, that: Clearly limitations in either software or process were uncovered with IB's handling this incident. My hope is that improvements will be made and it would be confidence building to learn of them. Even if the exact situation doesn't recur, it seems that a system for handling primary exchange outages in this era of multi-venue traded products needs to be in place.
by the way ... what brokers did allow trading yest in AMEX after they went down ? perhaps it would be a wise idea to have a second brokerage account at those firms in case this happens again
Just as a data point, MBT is still allowing trading of DIA (picked at random) Since someone asked last - I tried to place a limit order for DIA in TWS with a forced ECN route (not SMART or AMEX) and it still refuses to accept the order so it looks like IB customers are hosed. Edit: TDAmeritrade seems ok too Edit2: Looks like IB fixed something, can now place an order for DIA routed to ARCA, order is not rejected anymore. Orders using SMART are going to ISLAND. If you force AMEX the orders aren't being acknowledged (but they arent rejected as before)
I think this thread proves that even those that consider themselves 'informed' are in fact clueless. Black Swan. That said, I just noticed RTH halted again, but it appeared to correct itself faster this time. Obviously there's a coding bug here that needs to be fixed. And no, I was not hosed in any position, but keep in mind that trading etfs, there is often not a direct hedge.
This is a big mess. I just had my USO move 40 cents against me while a market order was working for 15+ minutes. Eventually I figured out that I had to change the Order defaults to allow trading outside of regular trading hours so I could execute on an ECN. IB needs to communicate a little better about these issues. I saw data turn off for Amex symbols, but when it came back I figured we were ok to trade. I didn't get any bulletins regarding Amex outages today.
Strange. My TWS received these today =========================== To AMEX traders: Thu Jun 21 12:22:35 2007 EST AMEX is currently halted for stock trading due to technical problems at the exchange. =========================== To AMEX traders: Thu Jun 21 15:03:41 2007 EST Resolution: AMEX is once again available for stock trading.
just confirms that IB is getting worse every day. Recently it is impossible to do international transfer as T+0 - effectively disallowing cash management for larger accounts. And yes, I have the same experience with the chat - it take 20+ minutes and nobody usually comes back - for instance funding chat is completely disabled right now.
Just for the record , it is not my purpose to bash IB, and I am usually among the first to defend. I do think this was an error that should not have happened and should have been corrected faster than it was yesterday. Would also be nice to get some acknowledgment of the problem and an explanation of what is being done to correct it. That said, I do not agree that IB is getting worse every day, and they are probably doing 1000 things right for every wrong one.